The special theory of relativity, formulated
by Albert Einstein in 1905, is based on the experimentally confirmed idea
that the velocity of light is the same universal constant, c= 3x1010 cm./sec.,
for all observers who move uniformly in straight lines relative to each
other. Consequently, Einstein's genius deduced that events which are simultaneous
to one observer are not simultaneous to a second observer.

Furthermore, moving clocks run slow. Moving
measuring sticks contract in length along the direction of motion. Energy
is equivalent to mass -- i.e. E = mc2. And the mass of a particle increases
to infinity as the velocity approaches that of light. Einstein's results
have been confirmed many times in physics laboratories.

Like all scientific facts, these results
presuppose that the observers are in a common state of consciousness whose
legitimacy is determined by their agreement or social contract. The legitimacy
accorded any scientific theory is a sociological matter. In fact, one interpretation
of quantum physics is that physical reality does not objectively exist
independent of the participating observers.

Physicists use a simple geometric picture
of the flat spacetime of special relativity called a "Minkowski diagram."
Relativity unites space and time into a unified "four dimensional space-time
continuum" in which time appears in the distance formula with a sign different
from the sign of space. Events are conceived of as points on the Minkowski
diagram. The history of a sequence of events is described by a curve or
path on the Minkowski diagram called a world line. Each event is the origin
of a future light cone and a past light cone. World lines that are everywhere
inside the light cones are called time-like and describe the history of
particles moving at velocities less than the velocity of light. World lines
that are everywhere on the light cones are called light-like and describe
the histories of real photons, neutrinos and gravitons that move at exactly
the velocity of light. World lines that are everywhere outside the light
cones are called space-like and would correspond to tachyonic processes
happening faster than the velocity of light.

Space-like processes, if they exist, could
be in two or more widely separated places at the same time. Furthermore,
these space-like processes allow the effect to precede the cause for some
observers and not for others. They are not allowed in classical physics
but are acceptable in quantum physics according to some interpretations.
Quantum transitions or "quantum jumps" may be thought of as space-like
processes.

Folded Space

Some psi researchers have attempted to
use the concept of curved spacetime to eliminate some of the apparent paradoxes
involved in psi phenomena. Psychologist Gertrude Schmeidler has suggested
that the universe may contain an extra dimension that permits "topological
folding" to occur so that two regions which are widely separated in an
Einsteinian universe might be in immediate contact, much as two points
on a towel which are normally quite a distance apart may be adjacent when
the towel is folded. Thus, apparent instances of ESP across great distances
might be explained by postulating that the persons involved are somehow
in close proximity in the "folded" space.

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler (a man
with pronounced antipathy toward psi research) has theorized that, at a
microscopic level, quantum effects might tear the fabric of spacetime,
producing a structure involving wormholes. He speculated that such wormholes
could connect pairs of oppositely charged particles such as electrons and
positrons. Wheeler's hypothetical structure is sometimes called the "quantum
foam." Such wormholes may exist on a macroscopic scale and, in some cases,
rotating black holes may give rise to a "tunnel" or shortcut to another
region of spacetime. Physicist
Fred Alan Wolf has implicitly suggested (in a cartooned text called
Space,
Time and Beyond) that such wormholes may provide the connections needed
to explain psi phenomena over long distances or temporal intervals.

Fred Alan Wolf

Wolf, himself, has become one of the most
prolific and articulate writers interpreting the complexities of theoretical
physics to a general audience -- particularly those interested in psi and
consciousness. His book, Parallel
Universes, is probably the best popular explanation of Everett
and Wheeler's "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Multidimensional Spacetime

Multi-dimensional models of spacetime have
been proposed by physicist/psi researchers Russell Targ, Harold Puthoff
and Edwin May. They proposed that ordinary four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime
may be the "real" part of an eight-dimensional complex spacetime.,

An eight-dimensional models of spacetime
to account for psi have also been proposed by physicist Elizabeth Rauscher.
She suggests that soliton waves in a complex multidimensional space might
serve as possible psi signals, as they would be able to propagate over
large "distances" with little attentuation. She asserts that signals that
appear to be superluminal in four-dimensional spacetime may be subluminal
in eight-dimensional spacetime. She also contends that the problem of causal
loops arising from backward causal chains need not arise in eight-dimensional
spacetime. Rauscher suggests that any space-time dependence that exists
for psi effects may be accounted for in terms of signal propagation velocities
in complex spacetime. However, it is not clear that Rauscher's theory can
be tested by this method unless some means of measuring the complex coordinates
are provided; otherwise, they simply constitute free parameters that may
be adjusted at will, rendering the theory incapable of falsification.

A more comprehensive and sophisticated
hyperspace model, developed by Saul-Paul Sirag, is summarized in this section
under the heading of "unified field theories" and developed further in
the Appendix.

The EPR Effect and Bell's Theorem

Recent theoretical developments in quantum
theory known as the EPR effect (named Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen's 1935
paper on the quantum connection between spatially separated systems), now
formulated in a theorem by John S. Bell (called Bell's Theorem), allow
for the an instantaneous effect between any two places in the physical
universe.,, There is no violation of Einstein's theory of relativity because
the effect does not require the propagation of energetic signals. The confirmation
of this principle of nonlocality suggests that psi phenomena, if they exist,
need not be in conflict with the established laws of science.

The prejudice of classical causality says
that an event can only be influenced by other events that are in its past
light cone. Events in the future light cone and outside the light cone
in the "absolute elsewhere" are said not to influence the event of interest.
Classical causality does work on the statistical level in which we average
our observations over sets of events. Almost all of the measurements of
atomic physics are adequately described by the statistical limit of the
quantum principle.

However, both general relativity and quantum
theory in the form of Bell's theorem show that classical causality is not
correct in principle on the level of individual events., Recent experiments
by John Clauser at U.C., Berkeley, and Alain Aspect at the University of
Paris, show that classical causality is violated for individual atomic
events. (Local causes operate within the velocity of light.) These experiments
measure the simultaneous arrival of two photons at spatially separated
detectors., The two photons originate from the same atom. Bell's theorem
enables one to calculate what the r`0d of simultaneous arrival should be
if the statistical predictions of quantum theory are correct. It also enables
one to calculate the rate of simultaneous arrival if physical reality is
objective and locally causal for the individual photons.

The experiments of Clauser and Aspect contradict
the rate of photon coincidences predicted on the basis of an objective
and locally causal reality. The measured rate agrees with the prediction
of ordinary quantum theory. This means that physical reality either is
not subject to the principle of local causation or does not objectively
exist independent of the observers who participate in its creation.

Bell's Theorem and the related experiments
may have importance for the understanding of personal human experience.
The human brain stores and processes its information at the level of single
organic molecules and is a single macroscopic quantum system. Acts of consciousness
may be vie ed as incorporating quantum events.

The illusion of the classical scientific
paradigm that is shattered by the quantum principle is the assumption that
there is an immutable objective reality "out there" that is totally independent
of what happens in consciousness "in here." Quantum theory forces a new
kind of logic in science that is still mathematical and disciplined. The
Nobel prize physicist Eugene Wigner of Princeton has repeatedly written
that consciousness is at the root of the quantum measurement problem.

All classical measurements, including classical
measurements of quantum processes of the type considered by Heisenberg
in his "microscope" that leads to the uncertainty principle, involve the
actual flow of energy and momentum in order to convey information. For
example, Heisenberg reasons that the position of an electron must be measured
by means of a second particle, e.g. a photon, that must collide with the
electron in order to get the information on the electron's position. The
fact that action is quantized in units of Planck's constant, h 10-27 erg-sec.,
implies uncontrollable minimal energy and momentum transfers between photon
and
electron in the collision. The result of Heisenberg's thought experiment
is that it is impossible to predict the simultaneous values of both the
position and the momentum of the electron with complete certainty. The
only way to gain knowledge of the uncertainties is to repeat the experiment
many times under "identically prepared" conditions. These kinds of classical
measurements of quantum processes are fundamentally statistical.

Josephson proposes that there may be another
level of measurement that transcends the limitations of Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle. He says that this limitation is perhaps only a "reflection of
the kinds of observation we can make," and that "the physical description
of the world would change radically if we could observe more things." Einstein
was also firmly convinced that there was another way to knowledge, but
his refusal to accept the "telepathic" implications that he saw so clearly
in his EPR effect prevented him, like Moses, from seeing the promised land.
Thus, Einstein's Autobiographical Notes contain this remark about
the EPR effect:

There is to be a system which
at the time t of our observation consists of two partial systems S1, and
S2, which at this time are spatially separated....If I make a complete
measurement of S1, I get from the results...an entirely definite Y-function
Y2 of the system S2. The character of Y2 then depends upon what kind of
measurement I undertake on S1....One can escape from this conclusion only
by either assuming that the measurement of S1 (telepathically) changes
the real situation of S2 or by denying independent real situations as such
to things which are spatially separated from eath other. Both alternatives
appear to me entirely unacceptable.

It is very interesting to note here that the
Y function referred to by Einstein is the standard quantum probability
function, referring to the mathematical probabilities which underly the
subatomic interactions of the physical world (i.e., Schrodinger's Wave
Function). At least one physicist has commented on the possible synchronicity
that this physical term may be very relevant in the psi effect of consciousness
researchers.

Physicists have actually developed a number
of possible conceptual strategies for integrating the EPR effect and Bell's
Theorem. Physicist Nick Herbert, in his book Quantum Reality, describes
eight possible interpretations: there is no underlying reality; reality
is created by observation; reality is an undivided wholeness; there are
actually many-worlds; the world obeys a non-human kind of reasoning; the
world is made of ordinary objects; consciousness creates reality; unmeasured
quantum reality exists only in potential. Each of these interpretations
poses its own paradoxes. Given Bell's Theorem and the EPR effect, all of
them must allow for non-local (or superluminal) interactions.

The nonlocal nature of the state vector
collapse, as described above, suggests that particles of matter are not
accurately describable as separate, localized entities. Rather seemingly
isolated or separate particles may be intimately connected with one another
and must be seen as parts of a higher unity.

Physicist David Bohm has referred to the
universe as a "holomovement," invoking an analogy to a hologram (a three-dimensional
photograph in which the entire picture is contained in each part). Bohm
has termed the world of manifest appearances the "explicate order" and
the hidden (nonlocal) reality underlying it the "implicate order." He also
proposes a new mode of speaking, which he calls the rheomode, in which
"thing" experessions would be replaced by "event" expressions.

In constrast with theories such as Evan
Harris Walker's and Saul-Paul Sirag's, the implicate order theory lacks
a specific mathematical formulation from which testable predictions may
be derived. On the other hand, the implicate order theory is consistent
with and provides a good philosophical underpinning for the testable observational
theories, such as those of Mattuck and Walker.

Observational Theories

Physicist Evan Harris Walker has put forth
an observational theory that equates the conscious mind with the "hidden
variables" of quantum theory.

Evan Harris Walker

Walker notes that, due to the necessarily
nonlocal nature of such hidden variables, quantum state collapse by the
observer should be independent of space and time; hence, psi phenomena
such as telepathy should be independent of space-time separation.

Noting that the conventional view in physics
is to deny that the paradoxes of quantum mechanics have implications beyond
the mathematical formalisms, Walker defines his theory:

The measurement problem in Quantum
Mechanics has existed virtually from the inception of quantum theory. It
has engendered a thousand scientific papers in fruitless efforts to resolve
the problem. One of the central features of the controversy has been the
argument that characteristics of QM imply that an observer's thoughts can
affect an objective apparatus directly, which in turn implies the reality
not only of consciousness but of psi phenomena. I have written several
papers saying that such a feature of QM is not a fault, but rather represents
a solution to problems that go beyond the usual perview of physics. Thus,
I have developed a theory of consciousness and psi phenomena that arises
directly from these bizarre findings in QM, findings now supported by specific
tests of the principles of objective reality and/or Einstein locality.

Walker specifies channel capacities for various
"regions" of mental activity. He calculates the rate for "dataprocessing
of the brain as a whole at a subconscious level" (S) to be euqal to 2.4
x 1012 bits/sec. The data rate for conscious activity (C) is equal to 7.5
x 108 bits/sec, and the channel capacity of the "will" (W) is equal to
6 x 104 bits/sec.

Walker's derivation of the above rates
is based on the assumption that electron tunneling across synapses is the
basis for the transmission of impulses across synapses and that the large-scale
integration of brain activity is also mediated by electron tunneling.

Copenhagen physicist Richard Mattuck has
proposed an observational theory which builds on the work of both Helmut
Schmidt and Evan Harris Walker. He asserts that PK results from the restructuring
of thermal noise through the action of mind, involving a decrease in entropy.
His hypothesis is "not of the 'Maxwell demon' type" as "it does nK&#0;
operate by selection of states of individual molecules, but rather by the
selection of macroscopic pure states." Using the example of a moving ball,
Mattuck notes that, as its velocity is distributed about its current mean
due to thermal noise, an observer can select increasingly higher velocity
states. This selection may be made in steps, resulting in possible incremental
increase in velocity by the ball.

Unified Field Theory and Consciousness

A hyperspace model of consciousness has
been developed by interdisciplinary scholar Saul-Paul Sirag, at the Institute
for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley and San Francisco's Parapsychology
Research Group.

Saul-Paul Sirag

Further details of Sirag's work-in-progress
are presented in the Appendix. In my estimation, this work (while incomplete)
represents the most advanced model available linking consciousness at a
deep level with physical reality. I have been closely associated with Sirag
since before he began this work in 1974, when he was a research associate
at the Institute for the Study of Consciousness (ISC) in Berkeley. Frankly,
after years of detailed discussions with him, I still find it very difficult
to comprehend his model. I have included it as an Appendix to the revised
edition because I believe that Sirag may well be speaking the language
of the future in consciousness research. Here is the story of the development
of Sirag's approach:

Arthur Young, the founder of the Institute
(whose own "reflexive universe" model is presented next this this section),
asked Sirag to work out the algebraic group structure of the rotations
of the tetrahedron. Young also encouraged Sirag to study the works of Sir
Arthur Eddington, the physicist who was famous for producing a nearly incomprehensible
unified field theory, which purportedly unified gravity and electromagnetism
as well as general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Arthur M. Young

The key to this unification was also group
theory. Sirag was impressed by the fact that, although Eddington's work
had been neglected for decades, the central importance of group theory
for unified field theory had become established by recent physics.

Eddington's unification was based upon
the 4-element group called the Klein group K4. Eddington thought of this
group as describing the structure of the most elemental measurement: seeing
whether or not two rigid rods are the same length. He regarded group theory
as the solution to the mind-matter duality problem. His solution can be
stated in this way: insofar as as the mind can know matter, it has a group
structure isomorphic to that of matter.

Eddington's "structuralist" approach found
support from an unexpected quarter for Sirag when he came upon Piaget's
work on the structure of the acquisiton of knowledge by children. Eddington
had declared K4 to be the primary group structure of the acquisition of
physical knowledge by professional physicists because of his use of K4
to describe the fundamental structure of measurement. Piaget found, by
testing children in precisely contrived situations, that K4 was also the
basic structure of children's acquisition of physical knowledge. Piaget's
names for the four elements of K4 are well known: identify, negation, collaterality
and reciprocity.

The problem, for Sirag, was that K4 as
a mathematical group structure did not offer sufficient complexity to capture
the richness of theoretical physics since the time of Eddington. He assumed
that there had to be a much larger group structure. He was intrigued with
the possibility that a larger, finite group structure called S4 (with subgroup
K4) was the right path to unification of mind and matter. This idea took
many years to mature.

In 1977, Sirag published a short piece
in the prestigious British science magazine, Nature, that was both
a criticism of and a tribute to Eddington's mass ratio derivation. Sirag
was very impressed by Eddington's use of epistemological principles as
a clue to unify gravity and electromagnetism, and his attempt to account
for the fundamental pure numbers in physics by purely epistemological reasoning.
Eddington's program was too ambitious to be carried out directly, Sirag
thought, so as a kind of half-way measure, he tried to reduce the number
of pure numbers to be accounted for by judicious combinatorial reasoning.
This kind of reasoning led to a rather extensive paper, "Physical Constants
as Cosmological Constraints" published in 1983.

In this paper Sirag showed that the physical
constants determine the large-scale structure of the universe in such a
way that the present-day scale factor -- the "radius" can be calculated,
as well as the age and the density, and various other cosmological properties.
Sirag hypothesized the age of the universe to be 32 billion years. This
differs markedly from the usual statements of 10-20 billion yars. These
numbers are really based on the measurement of Hubble's constant which
Sirag has calculated as 15 kilometers per second per megaparsec (which
implies a closed universe), while the usual "measurement" is 50-100 in
the same units, implying an open universe. Presumably the Hubble telescope
(due to be lofted in 1990) will settle the issue. (Should Sirag's predictions
prove correct, he could be considered a possible Nobel Prize candidate.)

Additionally Sirag presented a finite-group-algebra
unification model in January 1982 at the American Physical Society meeting
in San Francisco under the title, "Why There are Three Fermion Families."
This work is particularly significant as physicists have recently confirmed
that there are indeed exactly three families of sub-atomic matter particles,
as Sirag had predicted. An Associated Press article on the discovery quotes
Nobel Laureate physicist Burton Richter, Director of the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center, as saying that the major mystery remaining is "why
God chose three families instead of one or nine or 47." Burton had apparently
not read Sirag's paper, as this precisely the issue Sirag has addressed.

In his various published works, Sirag claims
to have developed new solutions for some of the most fundamental problems
in all of science: the age and size of the universe and the number of basic
subatomic building blocks. The predictions which he has made in these areas
stand to be either confirmed or refuted in the coming decades. It is from
this theoretical work that his mathematical theory of consciousness has
emerged. While models of consciousness are far more difficult to verify
or falsify than models of the physical universe, the logic of developing
a model of consciousenss from advanced views of physical reality is quite
compelling. Whether or not Sirag's particular models are confirmed, it
seems possible that a successful physical-mathematical solution to the
mind-matter problem may eventually develop from the type of ambitious program
which Sirag has developed.

Sirag's model of consciousness, as presented
in the Appendix, could be called a Pythagorean approach to consciousness,
since Sirag's strategy is to look to mathematics for an appropriate structure
to describe the relationship between consciousness and the physical world.
He finds that unified field theories of the physical forces depend fundamentally
on mathematical structures called reflection spaces, which are heierarchically
organized in such a way that an infinite spectrum of realities is naturally
suggested.

This situation is natural because mathematicians
have discovered that the hierarchical organization of reflection spaces
also corresponds to the organization of many other mathematical objects
-- e.g. catastrophies, singularities, wave fronts, and contact structures,
error correcting codes, sphere packing lattices, and, perhaps most surprisingly,
certain regular geometric figures including the Platonic solids.

It is generally believed by physicists
working on unified field theory that space-time is hyperdimensional, with
all but four of the dimensions being invisible. The reason for this invisibility
is a major subject of reseach. Beside space-time dimensions, there are
also other internal (or invisible) dimensions called gauge dimensions.
The reality of these gauge dimensions is also a topic of controversy and
research. In Sirag's view both the extra space-time dimensions and the
gauge dimensions are real. This provides scope for considering ordinary
reality a substructure within a hyperdimensional reality. This idea has,
of course, been suggested before -- e.g. it is implicit in the Cave Parable
of Plato. The difference in Sirag's approach is that the structure of the
hyperspace is defined directly by the properties of physical forces.

A further innovation in Sirag's approach
is that his version of unified field theory embeds both spacetime and guage
space in an algebra whose basis is a finite group. This group, which directly
models certain symmetries of particle physics, is a symmetry group of one
of the Platonic solids -- the octehedron. Thus it is a mathematical entity
contained in the reflection space hierarchy. In fact the reflection space
corresponding to the octehedron is seven-dimensional and is also a superstring-type
reflection space, so that a link with the most popular version of unified
field theory is provided.

The central postulate of Sirag's paper
is that this seven-dimensional reflection space is a universal consciousness,
and that invidivual consciousnesses tap into this universal consciousness.
This implies that the high level of consciousness enjoyed by hu$ans is
due to the complex network of connections to the underlying reflection
space afforded by a highly evolved brain.

Moreover, the hierarchy of reflection spaces
suggests a hierarchy of realms (or states) of consciousness. Each realm
would correspond to a different unified field theory with different sets
of forces. In fact, the seven-dimensional reflection space is contained
in an eight-dimensional reflection space, and contains a six-dimensional
reflection space, so that there would be a realm of consciousness directly
"above" ordinary reality, and a realm of consciousness directly "below"
ordinary reality. In principle the relationship between the different forces
in these different realms could be worked out in detail, so that precise
predictions could be made.

Sirag believes that this hierarchy of realms
of consciousness is analagous to the spectrum of light discovered in 1864
by James Clerk Maxwell in his electromagnetic theory of light, which unified
the forces of electricity and magnetism. Maxwell had no way of directly
testing his theory, which proposed the reality of frequencies of light
both higher and lower than that of ordinary light. He boldly proposed the
existence of invisible light, simply because his equations contained the
higher and lower frequencies.

Similarly, in the unification of all the
forces, we can expect something new to be described, which could be the
analog of light. Sirag proposes that this new thing be consciousness, and
that since the mathematics of the unification gives reflection space a
central role, the hierarchy of reflection spaces suggests a hierarchy of
realms of consciousness.

Evaluating Implications of the New Physics

One of the most fundamental developments
in the past two decades has been the experimental confirmations of the
principle of nonlocality in quantum mechanics and the realization of the
importance of that principle for a theory of psi phenomena. If nothing
else, this breakthrough strongly suggests that psi phenomena, if they exist,
need not be in conflict with established laws of science.

At present, theories regarding psi are
somewhat premature for two reasons. We still lack a reliable data base
and repeatable psi effects upon which a theory might be constructed and
refined. We also lack a comprehensive theory of consciousness itself, upon
which a theory of psi must, inevitably, be built. Thus many of the theories
discussed represent mere presentations of "theoretical environments" in
which more testable theories might be constructed. Sirag's "work in progress"
as presented in the Appendix represents the beginnings of a venture which,
if successful, will run a course of many generations.

A note of caution may be appropriate at
this point. While I have been focusing on the relationship between physics
and consciousness, this is only a short step from the issue of physics
and mysticism. It is in this realm that many physicists themselves, as
well as scholars of mysticism, feel that physics can have little to say.
Ken Wilbur, for example, firmly maintains that the attempt to prove the
reality of mystical experience by resorting to scientific arguments does
a great injustice to genuine mysticism which is self-supporting and timeless.
Whereas scientific theories are in constant flux. This is an important
point, however, it is also premature to assume that physics will never
develop permanent and complete answers. After all, physics is based upon
mathematics, and that field does seem to have developed some permanent
solutions.

. Russell Targ, Harold E. Puthoff &
Edwin C. May, "Direct Perception of Remote Geographical Locations," in
C. T. Tart, H. E. Puthoff, & R. Targ (eds.), Mind At Large.
New York: Praeger, 1979, pp. 78-106. The authors state this work was in
conjunction with physicist Gerald Feinberg -- who is well-known for his
postulation of the existence of tachyons, particles that travel faster
than light.

. Physicist Evan Harris Walker ("Review
of Mind At Large," Journal of Parapsychology, 45, 1981, 184-191)
has observed, however, that if we retain the inverse-square law for gravity,
the effect of four extra dimensions on planetary trajectories should have
been observed.

. Evan Harris Walker, "Measurement in Quantum
Physics Revisited: A Response to Phillips' Criticism of the Quantum Mechanical
Theory of Psi," Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research,
October 1987, 81(4), 333-369.